


Sea of Wonders

by sophiahelix (orphan_account)



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:38:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/sophiahelix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt. I<br/>fear. I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul." - Jonathan Harker</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sea of Wonders

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Puffy Joe

 

 

Flicker.

Shadow.

Flame.

Black.

Gold.

Rise.

Fall.

Breath.

In.

Out.

Beat.

Beat.

Breath.

Flame.

Shadow.

Flicker.

Darkness.

****

The candle is out.

The sleeping young man lies behind curtains, heavy with familiar dust. The room smells of family. Old polish, the spider's nest in the corner, mildew in the lead of the window panes, mouse droppings and mouse guts in the thick rug, the long draperies. Smell of must and age, like smelling his own blood, licking his own palm.

Smoke rises from the candle. The casement has swung open a little.

He enters the room, a slight, chilling wind. The odors swirl around him, familiar, a comfort. In the heart of the room there is another heart.

Beat. Beat. Breath.

Amongst this dust, this stopped time, the young man's breath is like a storm, a child's whisper, a strong hand sweeping ashes from a hearth. His heart is like a trembling mouse, like the clang of hammer upon anvil.

Breath. Beat. Beat.

He can _feel_ the warmth of life, rising from the man resting upon the bed. He feels it as he feels no flame, no fire. The heat of blood calls. It sings.

He crosses the room.

A touch of his hand -- so white, so cold -- and the dust-filled curtains are swept to the side. The man -- he is Jonathan, Jonathan -- sleeps behind them, with his whisper-loud breath, his hammer-soft heart.

Dracula draws back his lips, and bends to feed.

An unaccustomed wisp of logic forces its sluggish way through his mind, so full now of hunger and blood. He recalls, for a moment, his long-lingered-over plans: the houses, the boxes of earth, the new language and new customs, and the many many hearts he will have all for himself alone, without the terrible wood and water and wafers his own people use against him.

Dracula closes his mouth, cold lips over cold teeth.

The man -- Jonathan, Jonathan -- sleeps beneath him still, a heavy slumber more fitted to children or cattle than a grown man. There is a grey, growing light in the room, a mere presage to dawn, but enough to bring stupor to dark hearts. He reaches down for one brown hand, curled upon the coverlet, and brings it to his lips. He means only to kiss it in the custom of his land, to let the man go in peace, all unknowing of the fate that should have been his, but he looks at the man's face a moment too long.

The pulse throbs at Jonathan's temple.

Dracula traces that blue line all down the young man's face, one transculent, pointed nail markng the skin with white, and presses his finger to the twitching, warm skin where jaw meets throat. Jonathan's lashes lift a fraction, his warm breath held for a moment, and then he lapses back into repose. Dracula looks at that firm, sensual face, feels the strong pulse of blood beneath his hand, and does a thing he has not done in many years.

He begins to love, just a little.

His love is ever-slow, and bitter, like black coffee turned to syrup. It rises like sap in the dead heart of cold winter, and it is caustic, burning through him and his lover. He knows how it goes -- the consuming want, the long seduction, the madness of completion. He knows he will crush the one he loves like a child clutching a flower. He knows that the act of loving will weary him, stretch him thin, leave marks and scars upon him as surely as any wafer or cross of wood.

For him, to love is inevitable, inexorable.

He takes his hand from Jonathan's face at last, cold fingers hating to lose that living heat. Jonathan is a man of words, of books and speeches and laws, and he cannot be won by midnight touches. He will have to be loved some other way. In the meantime, the bright, cruel sun is rising, and it is a time for dark things to sleep.

Dracula leaves the room in mist, leaving only a faint chill and a memory of desire.

****

He does not love to exclusion. A dark-haired girl comes to him one evening in England, her billowing white nightdress open at the neck, as she plucks fretfully at the ribbons in her sleep. Women he loves like little kittens, soft sweet things to play with, their tiny claws drawing droplets of blood, their necks so easy to break. This one is like a child's toy, a shining clear jewel, her head full of nothing but hopes and innocent lies. Her little mouth is so greedy, her hands so grasping, and he delights in changing her into a cat, all unknowing as she sleeps on.

He does not really love her, though, and when she no longer amuses him he turns her loose to feed and live in her own way. Perhaps she dies.

He is hunted now, and the thought both excites and enrages him. How delightful to show his quality, how fearsomely flattering to so terrify them, those little bright-eyed mice who chase after him. And yet how impertinent, how monstrously insulting to his name, his pride, his family, to treat him like some fox to be flushed out of a hiding hole. The people of his land may turn God's tools against his flesh, but they know of respect for nobility and lineage.

But here is Jonathan again, his brown face white with fear and worry, his eyes nothing more than two dark, haunted flames. His hands and eyes stray evermore to a different dark-haired girl, the one who came to the graveyard at night, and in the midst of the all-consuming hunted fear Dracula sees, at last, how to love Jonathan.

He visits them both at night, putting the sleep on them so heavily that they never stir. He plays with them like dolls, rearranging their limbs, curling them close together or flinging them on far sides of the room, as if they had quarreled.

He caresses their limbs, their warm, supple flesh, the hair upon their bodies and heads. The woman's body he loves most to touch; the unfamilar curves, the tiny waist, the fragile bones of her face. He drinks from her oftenest, so tempting is her white, full throat, brushed by her long dark hair.

But it is Jonathan he loves, Jonathan whose eyes he long to see open for him, in recognition without hate. He clasps Jonathan's hands again and again, pretending that they converse together as they did at the castle, poring over some English map together, sharing meals. When he can no longer bear to wait he bites into Jonathan's flesh where neck meets broad shoulders, muscled like a Greek youth of antiquity.

He imagines living in the moldering mansion at Carfax with Jonathan, sleeping in the same box, their arms entwined as the madmen sing their lunatic songs to the moon. He imagines Jonathan's lips flushing red, the dark flames of his eyes growing brighter, his upright youth never fading. He longs for discourse, for a companion to navigate the teeming river of English humanity, to share novels by candlelight. For the first time in decades, he knows what it is to feel alone.

One night he strikes, boldly. Jonathan he lets sleep, while the woman he takes, awake, writhing and crying out as he drinks from her. The others break the door down just as her hot, soft tongue touches the open scratches on his chest and he flees, his task complete.

He will take the girl, crushing out her soul and her life. Jonathan will follow. And then Jonathan will belong to him.

They pursue him, by land and by water. When he leaves his box as mist at night, he watches Jonathan, sleeping beside the lover of the little kitten-girl. Jonathan's hands move furiously beneath his blankets, flames from their shared fire turning the chiseled lines of his face to something strange, and it is rarely his wife's name that he mouths. His fingers stray sometimes to small marks on his neck, unremarked by the others, which perhaps even he does not recall.

When the death blow comes, Dracula is not surprised to see, in that terrible instant before true death, that Jonathan wields the stake. Love becomes hate so easily, and he knows with more time, more luck, he might have won this man. He is only surprised at the grief mingled with the rage, and at the long, white hair of his beloved.

 

 

 


End file.
